We received a joyous announcement from our brother and sister-in-law today. Gary and Alejandra are expecting a precious baby girl, and their two daughters (our nieces), as you can see from the photos below, are very excited about their new sister. We're so happy for them and love watching the family grow.
As you can tell from the holiday theme of our blog, we are all about decking the halls with yuletide joy this season. Actually, since our house is not quite ready for the blue spruce tree, ornaments, and Hallmark knickknacks, Jen is extending her need to decorate onto the blog... Stay tuned for dancing reindeers and caroling elves.
We love Thanksgiving. Every year, we drive down to St. George, Utah to spend several quality days with immediate and extended family members at Grandmother Larson's home. Our 94-year old grandmother has hosted this wonderful multi-day gathering for the past 25 plus years, and we are truly grateful for the tradition. This year, 35 brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces traveled from California, Washington, and Utah for the celebration. The primary activity is, of course, eating. Tuesday night is the secret-ingredient-is-butter pork chops. Wednesday is the best-ever ham. Thursday is the always-perfectly-roasted turkey. Friday is the mouth-watering-tender prime rib. Saturday is Val’s amazing Italian pasta fiesta. And throughout the week, the buffet table is stacked with several choices of homemade pies. As you can imagine, meal preparation for 35 people takes a great deal of planning, team work, and several trips to the grocery store, and everyone rolls up their sleeves to help. We posted a few photos from the week below.
For the past five years, we've hosted the celebration of Chusok which is a Korean Harvest Moon Festival held on the 15th day of the Eighth Moon on the lunar calendar. Chusok is generally described as a “Thanksgiving” for good harvest, and it is one of the biggest migration events in Korea. Over half of the Korean population visit families and ancestral graves during the three-day festival. Of course, we celebrate an improvised version of the actual holiday. The party is held in November though the real holiday is observed in August or September, and we do not travel to our ancestors’ gravesites in Korea. Still, we greatly enjoy our annual tradition of getting together with our friends and serving a feast of Korean delicacies. Due to the remodel this year, we hosted the party at Lisa and Jocelyn’s lovely home in Draper. Thank you again L & J! You are much adored and loved by the ChoAdams!
As promised, here are more photos of our kitchen. We still have curtains and shelving units to install, but we are very happy with the results!
We've been working in "shifts" around the clock to complete the kitchen project. Today, Mike was up until 3 AM to finish assembling the cabinets, and Jen was up at 5:30 AM to finish painting the base molding. The electricians were at the house until 9 PM last night. The plumbers arrived at 8 AM, and the contractors started putting up the drywall around the utility room at 9 AM. It was a packed house with people sawing, drilling, painting, and hammering all day (like a scene from "While You Were Out" except that we were there and working with the rest of the crew). By seven o'clock in the evening, we have our much anticipated Highland-Park-Bungalow-IKEA-Kitchen! We'll post more photos soon... Gotta run to get ready for Chusok.
Choosing the "right" shade of orange took much more mental effort (and blog posts) than we could have ever imagined. But alas, we resume our normal lives with an Autumn Orange kitchen.
Okay... We were utterly consumed by the bazillion choices of tile type, texture, color, and grout. After days of agonizing over the details and several anxious (borderline obnoxious) calls to our tile guy, the tile work in the downstairs bathroom and laundry room turned out great!
Note to self - 'Apple Crisp' shown as bright, warm, and cheery in the Behr catalogue is cruelly deceitful. The most horrible mustard yellow dried to life instead. New name should be Apple Crisp Spit Up. After two more trips to Home Depot, and experimental brush strokes with Carrot Stick (aka Deer Hunting Season) and Orange Blaze (aka Rotten Peach), we've decided to retire for the evening. Perhaps tomorrow, we'll wake up with better color sense and/or develop an evolved appreciation for white.
New LG appliances arrived on Tuesday, and it is VERY possible we can move them into the kitchen this weekend! The cabinets are mounted, floors refinished, and walls are prepped for new paint.
It seems like just yesterday when we celebrated Marc and Amy Tanner-Tubays' wedding on a gorgeous autumn day in Big Cottonwood canyon. Two years later, on another spectacular autumn day, we celebrated the upcoming birth of a little Amy or a little Marc, and we could not be happier for the parents-to-be. Amy's gal pals hosted the baby shower brunch at Cafe Trio in Cottonwood Heights. Thank you Stacey for sending the photos!
Occasionally, Jen joins Mike on his business trips if the conference happens to fall on the right weekend and the "right" city. This was the ideal weekend to tag along as the weather in the bay area was perfect with minimal fog and temperatures in the 70's. It was also a much needed break from the remodel project... The conference was in Berkeley, and we stayed at the Claremont Resort and Spa, an historic estate constructed in 1915.
